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HAPPINESS HAVEN 



HAPPINESS 
HAVEN 



Two Talks on Blessedness and 
Christ's Way to It 









Sv AMOS R. WELU3 




BOSTON AND CHICAGO 
UNITED SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR 



^ x *# 



Copyrighted, 1912, 

oy the 

United Society of Christian Endeavor 



£<n> 



©CU33G350 



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Contents 



Page 
CHRIST'S COMMAND THAT IS 

OFTENEST BROKEN 7 

THE BEATITUDES TO-DAY 29 



Christ's Command That Is 

Oftenest Broken 

i. 

Our Sinful Worries 

OUR Lord did not utter many com- 
mands. From His gracious mouth 
proceeded many invitations, many exhorta- 
tions, many encouragements, many warn- 
ings, but few decrees. 

The orders that He did issue, however, 
though they were simple, were so profound 
and comprehensive that obedience is not at 
all easy. We break His commandments 
many times every day, because they relate 
to every day, and enter our minutest acts. 

If you were asked which of Christ's com- 
mands is most frequently broken, what 
Would you say? 

Some of you might point out the all-in- 
clusive behest, "Be ye perfect, even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect." But this 
commandment in the original is not so im- 
possible as it necessarily appears in our 
English translation ; it is the imperative 
mood in the future tense, which we have 
not in our language. It commands us to be 
perfect, but in the good time to come as 
[7] 



the result of our constant struggle toward 
perfection here. 

Christ uttered other vast commands, such 
as "Follow me," "Let not thy left hand 
know what thy right hand doeth," "Love 
your enemies," "Give to him that asketh 
thee," "Judge not," "Let your light so 
shine before men that they may glorify your 
Father in heaven." All of these reach to 
the depths of character and to the heights 
of action. Every one of them is often 
broken, in thought and in deed. 

But of all our Lord's commandments I 
think the one most frequently and most 
openly and most inexcusably transgressed 
is one that is perhaps most often on our 
lips, one that is very dear to us, one that 
we do not recognize as a command at all. 
It is the beautiful words that open the fav- 
orite chapter of all the Bible, the four- 
teenth of John : "Let not your heart be 
troubled." 

We take this as a prophecy of peace : 
"Your heart will not be troubled." 

We take it as a promise of help : "I will 
remove your trouble from you." 

We take it as a mother's sympathetic 
crooning : "There ! There ! Don't worry ! 
It'll all come out right." 

Undoubtedly all of these thoughts are in 
the saying, but incidentally and as conse- 
quences. In the main, however, when Christ 
said, "Let not your heart be troubled," He 



OUR SINFUL WORRIES 



was uttering a commandment as strict, if 
not as stern, as any in the Decalogue. It 
is a summons to action, and not to peace ; 
to struggle against our worries and not ac- 
quiescence in them. It does not so much 
promise relief as bid us take it. It is not 
a comfort to be accepted or rejected, but a 
command to be broken or kept. It is at 
the peril of our souls that we let our hearts 
be troubled. 

And yet who is there that does not 
worry? And who, even of saintly Chris- 
tians, counts his worry a deadly sin? 

We worry as children, as youth, as ma- 
ture men and women, and we worry our- 
selves into the grave. 

We worry over broken dishes and broken 
plans and broken hearts. 

We worry over torn dresses and severed 
friendships. 

We worry for fear the bread will not 
rise, and for fear we shall lose our posi- 
tions. We worry over a sneering word, 
over a stumbling speech, over a bad debt, 
and over a lost thimble. 

We open our eyes upon worries in the 
morning, and stare at them in the dark at 
night. 

We do not fight our worries : we coddle 
them. We are rather proud of them, as 
proving our discernment. A mind of un- 
failing serenity, we think, must be a shal- 
low mind, and a heedless one. 



10 



HAPPINESS HAVEN 



And there, confronting us in all our 
fretting, is that masterful command, "Let 
not your heart — let not your heart — LET 
not your heart be troubled." 

Surely this is the commandment that is 
most frequently broken, 



II. 



The Body Cure for Trouble 



HOW are we to keep it? How are we 
to prevent our hearts from being 
troubled? How are we to cure our wor- 
ries? 

The world has four cures, each of them 
zealously urged by tireless advocates. The 
first is what I will call the body cure. "Keep 
in good health," say the believers in this 
cure, "and you will keep in good heart." 
This is the mens sana in corpore sano. Ac- 
cording to this theory, if you are healthy, 
you will be happy. 

And there is much reason back of these 
claims. Many of our worries are only the 
mental shadows of undigested puddings. 
Many of our heartaches have no better ori- 
gin than headaches. Bad blood is quite 
likely to break out in bad temper. Flabby 
muscles have more than a remote connection 
with flabby will. When the bodily proc- 
esses move briskly, the mental processes 
are quite certain not to lag. "The Anat- 
omy of Melancholy" that old Richard Bur- 
ton wrote about is closely bound up with 
the anatomy of our bones and the organs 
they support. 

[11] 



12 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



Therefore the first and most obvious step 
along the pathway of obedience to our Sav- 
iour's command, "Let not your heart be 
troubled," is not to let our bodies be un- 
healthy. If, as is undeniably the case, you 
can wash off most of your worries by a 
plunge in the ocean, or leave them by the 
roadside in the course of a brisk walk, or 
lose them beyond recovery in the flood of 
a sound sleep, then to refrain from the 
swim, the walk, the sleep, is to sin against 
this commandment of Christ. If dyspepsia 
means the blues, and it does mean them, 
the deepest indigo, then to be careless of 
our eating and our digestion is deliberately 
to let our hearts be troubled. 

There ought to be no question about it, 
in this year of our Lord. Dumb-bells and 
Indian clubs are instruments of grace. Phys- 
ical stamina is on the road to spiritual 
stamina. Sins of the body are as sinful as 
sins of the soul. The wanton destruction 
of health is to be classed with the destruc- 
tion of virtue, because it leads to it. Health- 
iness and holiness are at root the same Eng- 
lish word. To train our bodies so that they 
are lithe and swift, strong and accurate, 
aglow with vigor and aflame with natural 
beauty, is in no slight degree to train our 
souls to vigor, to beauty, and to peace. 

In no slight degree, and yet not in the 
fullest degree. Not only by keeping our 
bodies from sickness can we keep our hearts 



THE BODY CURE 



13 



from troubles. The finest athletes are not 
always saints — far from it, often. Our days 
of hignest physical delight, our vacation 
days, are by no means free from depression 
and anxiety. On the other hand, some of 
the world's greatest sufferers, such as Rob- 
ert Louis Stevenson, have been its happiest 
examples of sunny serenity. 

It would seem, therefore, that we must 
look beyond health for the final cure for 
worry. Health is a mighty help, but it is 
no specific. We need more than a good di- 
gestion if we are not to let our hearts be 
troubled. 



III. 

The Mind Cure for Trouble 

THE second of the world's cures for 
trouble may be called the mind cure. 
It takes many forms, some of them quite 
fantastic and absurd. With some it is an 
attempt to philosophize trouble out of ex- 
istence, to deny that sin exists, or disease, 
or anything else that can make trouble. 
"God is good," these thinkers insist, "and 
God is all and in all, and therefore all 
things are good and there is no evil. Be- 
lieve this," they urge ; "believe it with all 
your mind, refuse to believe anything else, 
and you will keep your heart from trouble." 
There are others who do not go so far as 
to deny the existence of pain and sickness 
and sin ; they admit that these give quite 
substantial and continual proofs of their 
existence ; that, indeed, if we are not to 
believe that they exist we can quite as 
well convince ourselves that nothing exists, 
not even man, not even God. But they say 
that the mind has a vast and well-nigh un- 
limited power over the body and also over 
itself. They say that, just as a man can 
make himself sick by brooding over disease 
symptoms, so he can keep himself well by 
meditating on what is healthful and cheery. 
[14] 



THE MIND CURE 15 



They make much of the verse, "As a man 
thinketh in his heart, so is he," quite ob- 
livious to the fact that that is an altogether 
wrong translation. 

These philosophers exalt the human will. 
"Will yourself happy," they say, "and you 
will be happy. These doubts and fears 
and worries crowd your heart just because 
you do not drive them out." 

They bid us set forth upon each new day 
with our minds fixed upon purity and 
strength and peace. They bid us resolve 
within ourselves that we will not grow an- 
gry, or envious, or discouraged, or worried. 
They bid us make up our minds what 
sort of person we want to become, and 
presto ! we shall be just that sort of per- 
son. That is the mind cure for trouble. 

Now I should be the last to deny that 
this cure is efficacious. There is no worry 
that may not be doubled and trebled by 
brooding over it. Indeed, such brooding 
hatches out dozens of new worries that 
rapidly grow as big as the parent trouble. 
There is a curt phrase of current slang: 
"Forget it !" and that phrase contains a 
world of sound philosophy. 

To a large extent, the mind controls its 
occupants. Like a first-class hotel, it may 
refuse to entertain vagrants, guests with- 
out baggage, guests of doubtful character. 
To a large extent, the mind can shift its 
thoughts from one line to another as read- 



16 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



ily as a train of cars may be switched. We 
may, with the exercise of resolution, delib- 
erately exile ideas and feelings that are 
hurtful, and crowd our minds with the 
thoughts that are helpful. Since we can 
do this, it is worse than weak, it is actually 
sinful, not to do so. 

"To a large extent," I say; and yet not 
wholly. The human mind is powerful, but 
not omnipotent. Barricade it as we will, 
sometimes a rush of demons will tear the 
barriers down. Cleanse it and purify it 
as we will, there are miasmas that fly upon 
the winds and spread abroad through the 
very sunshine. 

Even the power of a well-disciplined 
mind has in it the elements of a dangerous 
pride, that Satan uses to our destruction. 
Even the house that is most emptied of 
devils, emptied, and swept, and garnished, 
may afford a home for seven worse devils 
than the first. Whoever has tried to will 
himself into happiness has found sooner or 
later that his will is a broken reed. Paul 
tried it with his matchless mind, and cried 
at last in despair, "What I would, that do 
I not ; but what I hate, that do I. When 
I would do good, evil is present with me. 
O wretched man that I am !" 



IV. 
The Play Cure for Trouble 

THE third of the world's cures for trou- 
ble is the play cure. 

This is a popular cure, very pleasant to 
take. The old like it almost as well as the 
young. It is favored by the learned and 
the ignorant. It is the basis of a system 
of moral philosophy of the highest respect- 
ability and more than two thousand years 
old. 

We do not often call it play ; we prefer 
the more dignified term, "recreation." The 
right kind of recreation, we say, is a re- 
creation. It makes us over. It sloughs off 
what was not in us by original creation, 
and puts us back into the sweet and pure 
state of nature. We become like children, 
and so enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Thus the millions seek to bury their 
troubles in the ponds with a fish-line, or 
race away from their troubles in an auto- 
mobile, or dance off their troubles in the 
ballroom, or crowd out their troubles by 
the fictitious images of the theatre, or lose 
their troubles on the links with the golf- 
ball, or shuffle off their troubles with a 
pack of cards. 

And this cure also has genuine curative 
[17] 



18 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



qualities, if it is rightly used. Most of us 
worry too much because we play too little. 
Our bow is always bent, and soon grows 
stiff and breaks. The razor of our mind is 
never rested, and soon it ceases to cut. 

Play is a tonic. It takes us brightly and 
decisively out of our gloomy surroundings. 
It lifts us from the ruts, where we were 
imprisoned along with our worries. It 
does not deprive the clouds of their rain 
and their lightning ; but it puts us above 
them, where we can look down upon their 
silver lining. 

The right kind of recreation stimulates 
the body or the mind or both. It breaks 
the current of gloomy thoughts, and en- 
ables us to turn them into happier chan- 
nels. It gets us out amid the freshness and 
purity of the woods and fields. It forces 
us into pleasant human associations. It is 
a powerful ally of both the body cure for 
trouble and the mind cure for trouble. 

And yet with play alone, even play at 
its best, no one can keep his heart from 
being troubled. The ancient wise man 
tried it. "I said in mine heart, Go to now, 
I will prove thee with mirth, therefore en- 
joy pleasure ; and I withheld not my heart 
from any joy." But the result of it all was 
the sad confession, "Vanity of vanities ; 
all is vanity and vexation of spirit." 

This has been the conclusion of every 
disciple of Epicurus, of every one who has 



THE PLAY CURE 



19 



sought peace in pleasure. Recreation for 
its own sake does not re-create. Troubles, 
whelmed in play, distracted by play, 
soothed by play, have a maddening fashion 
of reappearing as soon as play is over. 
Those whose life is most persistent in the 
pursuit of recreation are often the saddest 
at heart. Not thus may one prevent his 
heart from being troubled. 



The Work Cure for Trouble 

TH B fourth of the world's cures for trou- 
ble is the work cure. 

This is the cure that is most popular 
among modern Americans. Careless of the 
body, impatient of philosophy, preferring 
to watch while others play, the modern 
American, in the main, does not rely upon 
any one of the three remedies we have dis- 
cussed. But he does believe in work. He 
is confident that work, if it is only hard 
enough, will cure every evil and bring 
about every blessing. 

And he is not far from right. At least, 
activity, well-directed and constant activ- 
ity, is one of the unfailing springs of 
health, and happiness, and peace. 

Hard work at any honorable task is a 
glorious remedy for worry. The mind in 
pursuit of a worth-while result ceases to 
pursue will-o'-the-wisps or to run panic- 
stricken from hobgoblins. The back that 
is carrying any noble burden has no room 
for an old man of the sea. If at the end of 
the day you can survey any sound achieve- 
ment, whether it be a corn-field ploughed, 
or a dress made, or a fence built, or some 
[20] 



THE WORK CURE 



21 



loaves of bread baked, or a beautiful poem 
written, or a beautiful picture painted, 
you cannot look upon that sight with 
clouded eyes and a heavy heart. 

If you would not let your heart be trou- 
bled, do not let your hands be idle. The 
mischief that Satan finds for idle hands is 
very often the setting up of men of straw 
to worry over. How that delights the 
devil ! 

Idle hands are digging pitfalls. Idle 
minds are studying ruin. Do you remem- 
ber what the nobleman said in the parable 
as he gave the pounds to his servants? 
His command was, "Occupy till I come." 
That is our Lord's command to all His ser- 
vants, "Occupy till I come again." Occu- 
pation is a better medicine than laughter. 
Occupation is a better drill than a gymna- 
sium. Occupation is a better school than 
a college. Occupation is itself a recrea- 
tion. 

If you have learned to fill your days, to 
their ultimate minute, with useful labors 
for hand and brain, you will be very likely 
at the same time to fill them with happi- 
ness and peace. 

But again I must qualify; I must say 
"very likely" ; I cannot say "certainly." 

For industry does not always mean se- 
renity. Lord Avebury wrote two inspiring 
essays: one on "The Happiness of Duty" 
and the other on "The Duty of Happi- 



22 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



ness"; but he could not in the same way 
couple happiness and work. 

At present, for example, the laboring 
classes, so called, those whose industry is 
most incessant, those whose labors produce 
the most patent and substantial results, 
are the most restless, dissatisfied, and un- 
happy portion of humanity, and with very 
good reason. 

Indeed, it is very remarkable to note the 
absence of exhortations to industry from 
the recorded words of our Saviour. He 
was a carpenter, and He knew from His 
human experience the spiritual value of 
toil, yet no Beatitude is based upon labor, 
and the happiness that He prescribes for 
us and commands upon us has quite other 
sources and guarantees. 

Work is blessed. Work is happiness- 
producing. Work is one of the highest pre- 
rogatives of life. But work alone will not 
prevent our hearts from being troubled. 



VI. 



The Christ Cure for Trouble 



HOW, then, are we to obey Christ's 
command, not to let our hearts be 
troubled? How, if health is no impregna- 
ble barrier to worry? How, if the mind 
has no indomitable force against it? How, 
if pleasure has no victorious lure to trap 
it? How, if work has no tools to build an 
enduring palace of joy? What means does 
Christ offer for the keeping of His own 
command? 

He offers — Himself ! 

"Let not your heart be troubled" — the 
whole world knows the words by heart — 
"Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe 
in God, believe also in me." That is 
Christ's prescription for happiness : simply 
belief in Himself. 

But why did He not stop with belief in 
God? Especially since He Himself was 
one with God? Why did He add those 
strange words, "Believe also in me"? 

Because belief in God is not the pre- 
scription for happiness ; the prescription is 
belief in Christ. 

The ancient Hebrews believed in God, 
and shuddered before His awful sanctuary, 
bowed their heads while the high priest 
[23] 



24 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



passed behind the mysterious veil, and 
through most of their history ran away 
from Him to the more attractive gods of 
the heathen. 

Even to-day there are many who believe 
in God, but only as the stern embodiment 
of fate, slaughtering thousands with an 
earthquake shock, heaping just and unjust 
in common graves, of twenty seeds bring- 
ing but one to bear, of twenty noble lives 
bringing but one to happy fruition. 

Yes, even the devils believe — and trem- 
ble. 

Belief in God will not make one happy, 
will not keep one's heart from being trou- 
bled. The question must go deeper than 
that: "What kind of God do you believe 
in?" 

Believe in the Christ God ! That is the 
secret of an untroubled life, and the only 
secret. 

Believe in the God that enters humanity, 
that makes a little child the guardian of 
His kingdom, that sleeps in a manger and 
toils in a carpenter-shop. 

Believe in the God that walks our dusty 
ways, that endures our homelessness, that 
buffets our storms by land and sea. 

Believe in the God that lays hands upon 
the leper, that calms the lunatic, that sum- 
mons the dear one back from the grave. 

Believe in the God that whips rascals, 
that weeps over sinning municipalities, 



THE CHRIST CUBE 



25 



that confronts false councillors with silent 
condemnation. 

Believe in the God that has His Geth- 
semanes and His Calvaries as well as His 
mounts of transfiguration and ascension. 

You may already believe in God. You 
see Him on Mount Olympus, when now 
and then the parting clouds give glimpses 
of Him. He is feasting in an inaccessible 
heaven, or He is hurling thunderbolts at 
an offending earth. You believe in God, 
but you do not believe in the infinite Fa- 
ther, the universal Lover, the omnipotent 
and perfect Friend. And so your heart is 
troubled, and with that belief you must let 
it remain troubled. 

Do not stop there. "Ye believe in God, 
believe also in me." Believe in the God 
whom the world could never have guessed 
without Christ. Believe in the God who 
throws His arm around you, who takes 
your hand in His. And, believing with all 
your heart, your heart will no more be 
troubled. 



VII. 
An Untroubled Life 

HOW significant it is that Christ could 
say, "Ye believe in God, believe also 
in me," and even those that do not believe 
in Him receive the saying with respect ! 
Christ is not ridiculed for egotism or con- 
demned for blasphemy. Even to infidels it 
seems the natural thing for Him to say. 
That seeming is one of the proofs of the 
assertion. 

But a mightier, an overwhelming proof 
is the experience of the troubled heart it- 
self. It is not an experience difficult to ob- 
tain, nor a proof hard to demonstrate. 

If it were a matter of health, the tiniest 
microbe might confuse it. If it were a 
matter of philosophy, the least flaw in a 
syllogism would refute it. If it were a 
matter of recreation, a trifling touch of 
degeneration would annul it. If it were a 
matter of toil, it would be defeated by 
weariness or failure. But since it is only 
the soul's attitude, only a reaching out 
toward Christ, only the yielding of self 
that He may take possession, the proof de- 
pends upon Him and not upon ourselves, 
and we are only to receive and enjoy. 

And immediately, after we have entered 
[26] 



AN UNTROUBLED LIFE 



27 



this belief in Christ, all the agencies 
through which we have been vainly seeking 
relief from trouble receive new efficacy 
from Him, and gain a new significance. 

Our body is recognized now as the tem- 
ple of His indwelling. We have this pow- 
erful motive to keep it pure and strong. In 
the inspiring task we have the help of the 
new occupant. Our bodies are transformed 
by the renewing of our minds. Sickness is 
conquered by His presence. The seeds of 
disease are rendered innocuous. Even in 
physical weakness we discover a spiritual 
strength. The entire material foundation 
of life becomes vital, glowing, happiness- 
producing as soon as it is thus associated 
with the One who created it. 

Our mind becomes the mind of Christ, 
when we thus receive the Saviour. What 
a joy, not to think God's thoughts after 
Him, but to think them with Him ! It has 
become easy to think the trustful thoughts 
that are confidence, the quiet thoughts that 
are serenity. It has become an instinct to 
will our way into happiness, because it is 
now God who works in us to will and to do 
of His good pleasure. 

Our play for the first time becomes gen- 
uine re-creation when thus associated with 
the Lord of creation. We have now in His 
inward voice the unfailing test of helpful 
or harmful sports. We have now the lofty 
purpose and Presence that dignify the most 



28 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



hilarious amusement. We have never be- 
fore known what recreation is. 

And our work ! How glorious it grows, 
when Christ enters into it ! What an in- 
centive, to achieve results with Him ! 
What an inspiration is the sense of His 
comradeship in our toil ! Failure at once 
becomes impossible to us forevermore. 
Though the world may never call us suc- 
cessful, our goal is won, for it is the loving 
presence of Christ. The results of our 
work together are His concern. We know 
that they will come, in His good time, and 
we are happy in His will and way. 

Yes, whatever may be our surroundings 
or our fortune, we are happy in His will 
and way. We no longer need the command, 
"Let not your heart be troubled." Our 
troubles are a half-obliterated memory. 
They are like the dream of another world, 
a different and sad existence. We have 
entered the kingdom of heaven, which is 
righteousness and peace and joy in Christ's 
Holy Spirit. In seeking to fulfil His com- 
mand we have fulfilled His prophecy. His 
joy is in us, and our joy is fulfilled. 

Ah, brothers and sisters, it is all so easy 
and simple. It hardly needs the repeated 
telling, but for our repeated neglect and 
forgetfulness. God forgive us that so often 
we let our hearts be troubled. Christ help 
us to keep this commandment that is often- 
est broken. 



The Beatitudes To-day- 



Happiness, or Blessedness? 



IN our commonly used translations the 
Beatitudes begin with "Blessed" ; the 
true thought is rather, "Happy." 

All men want to be happy ; few men 
want to be blessed. 

Blessedness is the happiness of angels, 
happiness is the bliss of men ; and few men 
want to be angels — at least, not right away. 

Blessedness is happiness glorified, spirit- 
ualized, enriched with wisdom and grace. 

The Greek word translated "blessed" is 
the ordinary word for "happy." Christ put 
the blessedness into it. Christ lifted it up 
into spiritual places. This is only one of 
many words that Christianity has exalted. 
"Christian" itself is another. 

But to read this ennobled word into the 
fifth chapter of Matthew is an anachron- 
ism. Indeed, it is a confusing of the effect 
with the cause, for the fifth chapter of 
Matthew was the chief cause of the trans- 
formation. 

More than that, the translation, "Blessed," 
takes away much of the point of Christ's 
words. For our Lord took men where He 
[29] 



30 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



found them, though He never left them 
there. He found them seeking happiness, 
and He left them seeking blessedness. But 
His first words were always of the happi- 
ness they sought, and not of the blessedness 
He would have them seek. Not until He 
had obtained literal water did He point out 
the Water of life. Not until He had dis- 
tributed literal bread did He disclose the 
Bread of life. Paul followed the same 
method in Athens when he began with the 
gods the Greeks worshipped ignorantly, and 
ended by leading them to the Unknown 
God. 

In effect, the Beatitudes say this : "You 
want to be happy. I do not blame you. In- 
deed, I will help you. You need help, for 
you are travelling the wrong road. You 
will never reach happiness the way you are 
going, but by a way that runs quite oppo- 
site. Turn about, follow me, and yours 
will be the happiness for which you long." 

The Beatitudes are Christ's guide-book 
to happiness. The road is so different from 
the one ordinarily travelled that we have 
given a new name to its destination, calling 
it blessedness. But that confuses the issue 
between Christ and worldlings. They want 
to be happy, and Christ says, "I alone can 
make you so." "Blessedness" implies mak- 
ing others happy, and worldlings are not 
eager to do that. It implies holiness of 
character, and worldlings do not care for 



HAPPINESS, OR BLESSEDNESS? 31 



that. What they want is just to be happy. 
"Very well," said Christ, "I know the only 
way." Therefore He placed the Beatitudes 
at the front of His message to the world. 

And so I think it would be impossible 
to exaggerate the importance of insisting 
upon this use of "happy" rather than 
"blessed" in the Beatitudes. The entire 
appeal of Christianity and method of its 
presentation are involved in this. 

Say to any worlding that a holy bliss is 
experienced by mourners, the meek, the 
pure in heart, the persecuted, and he will 
not dispute you, neither will he be inter- 
ested ; he is not in pursuit of a holy bliss. 
He is in pursuit of a good time, and what- 
ever promises a good time will interest 
him. Christ in the Beatitudes promises a 
good time. 

This is not to say that there is not some- 
thing vastly better than a good time. This 
is not to place happiness on a level with 
blessedness. This is not to adopt the low 
ideals of the world. 

It is only to begin where Christ began, 
that we may end where Christ ended. He 
did not speak out of the opening heaven 
and bid men fly up thither. He came down 
where men were. He did not even on earth 
present Himself as a shining angel, purity 
and power gleaming from a countenance of 
dazzling beauty, and borne upon wings 
over the dusty roads of Palestine. He 



32 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



came as a man, a poor man, a working 
man, the lowliest of the lowly. He set 
Himself alongside the humblest human lot. 
"This is what the Father is always doing," 
He said ; and that is the sum of His gos- 
pel. 

Would it not have been strange, then, 
thus taking life as He found it, and thus 
entering into it simply and brotherly, if 
He had begun by ministering to needs that 
men did not feel, and offering joys that 
men did not desire? Why, it would have 
been at variance with His entire life and 
character. 

No. Men want to be rich ; Christ was 
poor, yet making many rich. Men want to 
be powerful. "All power," said Christ, "is 
given to me, and through me to my disci- 
ples." Men want above all things to be 
happy, and Christ's first word to them is 
of this supreme desire. 

Let us imitate our Saviour in this way 
of approaching people. There is too much 
giving, not of what men long for, but of 
what we think they ought to long for. The 
merchant's success is based upon a knowl- 
edge of human nature ; so is the politi- 
cian's ; so is the Christian worker's. We 
are to go forth into the highways and 
hedges of human nature and there invite 
our brothers to the feast. We shall never 
get them by sending gilt-edged invitations 
through the mail. 



Happy Are the Poor 
Happy Are the Rich 

"TTAPPY are the poor," wrote Luke, in 
J, 1 his report of the Sermon on the 
Mount. "Happy are the poor in spirit," 
wrote Matthew, in his report. 

Which did Christ say? or did He say 
both? and in that case was the second a 
commentary on the first, "Happy are the 
poor when they are also poor in spirit"? 

We must remember that Christ was 
preaching to an impoverished people, al- 
most an enslaved people, and that most of 
His followers were sunk in the depths of 
literal poverty. For that day, when prac- 
tically all wealth was wicked, and almost 
all saints were poor, the dangers of wealth 
and the spiritual advantages of poverty 
needed to be emphasized, and Christ em- 
phasized them. More easily, He said, can 
a camel squeeze himself through a needle's 
eye than a rich man squeeze into the King- 
dom of God. He bade the rich young ruler 
sell all that he had and give the proceeds 
away. He painted the doom of Dives and 
the eternal joy of Lazarus. "Woe unto 
you that are rich," He cried. In His par- 
[33] 



34 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



able He pictured the deceitfulness of riches 
as choking the good seed in human hearts. 
Poor Himself, homeless and penniless and 
often lacking bread, He opened His cata- 
logue of the happy with poor folks. 

Now this is precisely opposed to the the- 
ory and practice of the world, and to the 
practice if not the theory of most Chris- 
tians. 

"Happy are the rich," we cry, even while 
we piously ejaculate, "Blessed are the 
poor." We advocate missions and long for 
automobiles. We recommend self-denial 
and inquire the price of sealskins. We 
sing, "Thou, O Christ, art all I want," 
when an honest list of our wants would 
fill the hymn-book. We confess that the 
love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, 
and we try to uproot it and fill our bins 
with it. 

Let us be done with such hypocrisy. Let 
us admit that we want to be rich, and that 
not merely, as we so often unctuously say, 
for the good we could do to others with 
the money, but also for the good, the very 
pleasant good, we could do to ourselves. 

And in this we are entirely Christian. 
For if poverty is the ideal life, why did 
Christ recommend the rich young ruler to 
give his possessions to the poor? Why not 
leave the poor in their superior state? Why 
alleviate their happiness? Why comfort 
their bliss? 



POOR AND RICH 



35 



The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness 
thereof ; the Lord's, and not the devil's ; 
the earth, and not merely heaven ; the 
Lord's, and also His children's. All things 
are ours, since we are Christ's, and Christ 
is God's ; all things, things present as well 
as things to come. 

Christ came eating and drinking. He 
visited rich men's homes, and was buried 
in a rich man's grave. He praised John 
the Baptist, man of the locusts and wild 
honey, but said that the least of His own 
Kingdom was greater than John. The 
monks and nuns, with their vows of per- 
petual poverty, are in that the poorest rep- 
resentatives of our Lord. 

For poverty is debasing. It cramps body 
and stupefies the mind and benumbs the 
soul. Poverty is the handmaid of igno- 
rance, the parent of debauchery, the brother 
of despair. Poverty stretches the human 
spirit upon the rack of toil. It narrows 
experience. It lowers taste. It sears the 
soul. Poverty is the primal curse of Eden, 
poverty and not labor. 

Wealth, on the other hand, is a great 
blessing. It affords leisure, the nutriment 
of character. It gives its possessor the 
chance for friendship, for knowledge, for 
culture. Wealth is art, and music, and 
books, and travel. Wealth means develop- 
ment, and influence. To affect a scorn of 
wealth is insanely to scorn these blessings. 



36 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



"Happy are ye," Christ said to His 
poor, "not because of your poverty, but in 
spite of it ; because ye are poor also in 
spirit, repentant, humble, and trusting, and 
therefore are heirs of my Kingdom." He 
would say the same to-day to all the poor 
that are poor in spirit, to all the poor that 
belong to His Kingdom. 

But ah, with what emphasis would 
Christ say to-day : "Happy are the rich 
who are also poor in spirit, happy are the 
rich who are eager and active to enrich the 
world ! Happy are the rich who are spend- 
ing themselves to abolish poverty !" 

For poverty is the sin of the modern 
rich. In a land like ours, with its enor- 
mous natural advantages and its free in- 
stitutions, and in a time like ours, when 
science and invention have laid the natural 
forces at our feet, the prevalence of pov- 
erty is more than a misfortune, it is a dis- 
grace. 

If our land were Christian, there would 
be no poverty. There would be degrees 
of wealth, but no suffering from want, and 
no fear of want. 

Christ's own teachings have lifted the 
world into a region where some of them 
are no longer literally to be followed. To- 
day Christ would hardly bid the rich man 
to sell all he has and give to the poor ; but 
He would surely bid the rich man to use 
all he has for the abolishing of poverty. 



There is coming a time when the Beati- 
tude of the first century, "Happy are the 
poor," will coalesce with the Beatitude of 
the twentieth century, "Happy are the 
rich" ; for the poor will be no longer with 
us. In that day all will toil, and all will 
enjoy leisure. If wealth is an excess of 
riches above others, there will be no wealth, 
for greed will have lost its golden mask, 
and will be seen in its own hideous aspect. 

That will be the kingdom of heaven. 
Remember, it is to come on earth. It is 
not a kingdom of beggars and paupers, any 
more than it is a kingdom of misers and 
thieves. Happy will be the poor when 
they enter into it. Happy will be the rich 
when they make it possible. Happy will 
be the poor in spirit, whether impoverished 
or opulent, who, dethroning pride and 
greed, in the brother-love which our Sav- 
iour taught and exemplified transform this 
world into one great family, where the 
good of one is the good of all, on earth as 
it is in heaven. The happiness of poverty 
is a temporary happiness, made possible 
and certain by the conquering presence of 
Christ in the poverty. The happiness of 
wealth is the permanent happiness, to be 
enjoyed on earth by Christ's rich men who 
are laboring with Christ to make all men 
rich, and to be enjoyed by all in the king- 
dom of heaven, when riches will be the lot 
of all Christ's happy followers. 



III. 



Happy Are the Mourners 
Happy Are the Laughers 

"OLESSED are they that mourn"! Of 
13 all Christ's paradoxes none is more 
paradoxical than this. It is as if He had 
said, "Happy are the sad." 

In harmony with the saying, or its imag- 
ined import, Christ is pictured in prophecy 
as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. 
He is shown in the Gospels as weeping, at 
the grave of Lazarus, on the hill overlook- 
ing Jerusalem ; but never as laughing. He 
is imaged by the great artists as pallid 
with long vigils and burdened with a weight 
of anguish. 

Still further in harmony with the saying 
uncounted numbers of Christ's followers 
have immured themselves in gravelike cells, 
have worn only the black garb of the 
mourner, and have afflicted themselves with 
fastings, flagellations, and tortures almost 
unendurable. By the path of sorrow, the 
road to the tomb, they have expected to 
reach the summit of bliss. 

To-day, in absolute revolt from all this, 
multitudes are surging to the other ex- 
treme, and are seeking happiness in a de- 
[38] 



MOURNERS AND LAUGHERS 39 



nial of sorrow. They are training their 
eyes to be tearless. They are exercising 
their souls in the art of oblivion. They 
are stoutly saying to Sin, "I know you 
not," and to Pain, "You are only a ghost," 
and to all Suffering, "You are emptiness 
and nothing." 

"Don't worry" has become to many the 
sum of the law, the one commandment. 
"Laugh at grief," their philosophy bids, 
"and it will break as a bubble." "All is 
mental," these idealists urge, "and all is 
to be controlled if the mind is controlled." 
Therefore they are surrounding themselves 
with cheerfulness, with bright paper on 
the walls, and bright lights in the ceilings, 
and with flowers and music and smiling 
pictures and youthful voices. 

How empty and unworthy would this 
gay teaching appear to the Galilean ! as 
trivial as the monkish mourning, and both 
of them utterly untrue to Him ! 

For when Christ said, "Happy are the 
weepers," He did not exalt sorrow into a 
virtue, but he did acknowledge the neces- 
sity of sorrow. He "saw life steadily, and 
saw it whole." When He drove the hired 
mourners out of the house of Jairus, it was 
because they were hired, not because they 
were mourners. When He said, "The dam- 
sel is not dead, but sleeping," it was only 
as we call our graveyards "cemeteries," 
that is, "sleeping-grounds." The lovely, 



40 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



tender metaphor did not deny death, any 
more than in the case of Lazarus, when He 
said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," but 
immediately added plainly, "He is dead." 
Our Redeemer did not deny sin ; He con- 
stantly spoke of sinners as lost men. He 
did not deny sorrow, or count it a means 
of grace, but prayed that the cup of His 
sufferings might pass from Him. 

But on the other hand, the Saviour ex- 
alted happiness. Here at the outset of His 
ministry He is giving prescriptions for it. 
At the close of His ministry He said, 
"These things have I spoken unto you, 
that my joy might remain in you, and that 
your joy might be full" — His joy, only an 
hour before Gethsemane ! 

True, it is not recorded that Jesus 
laughed ; but what laughter does the Bible 
record? In the Old Testament, only the 
incredulous laughter of Abraham and Sa- 
rah, mocking at the Lord's promise ; the 
scornful laughter of the Israelites when 
Hezekiah proclaimed his passover ; the sar- 
castic laughter of Sanballat and his friends 
when Nehemiah began to build the wall ; 
in the New Testament, only the sneering 
laughter of the hired mourners in the house 
of Jai'rus when Jesus said, "The damsel is 
not dead, but sleepeth." There is not in 
all the Bible a single record of a genuine 
laugh. 

Indeed, has not Christianity alone 



MOURNERS AND LAUGHERS 41 



brought laughter to men's lives? India, 
the most idolatrous of lands, is the saddest 
of lands. China, that vast domain, has no 
room for a smile. Africa is the continent 
of haunting fear. But the Christian lands, 
with all their misery and sin, are neverthe- 
less vibrant with at least beginnings of 
laughter. 

Luke reports the Beatitude thus : "Happy 
are you that weep now, for you shall 
laugh." Did He merely look forward to 
the happy land from which He came, the 
land where God would wipe away all tears 
from all eyes? No; He looked forward 
also in glad assurance to tfte establishment 
of His Kingdom on earth, that kingdom 
which is not only righteousness and peace 
but also joy. In spite of their mourning 
now, they should laugh in the happy time 
to come. The happiness of the mourner is 
to be swallowed up in the happiness of the 
laugher. 

Therefore let us not reproach ourselves 
if we find it impossible for us to rejoice by 
the death-beds of our dear ones, if the hot 
tears will persist in coming, and the heart 
goes heavy all the day long. Our Christ 
is sorrowing with us. He is not pretend- 
ing lightly that it is nothing. He is not 
pressing to our tear-wet cheeks a comic 
mask. He is not trying to force us into 
an artificial happiness. 

But He is saying, with all the sympathy 



42 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



of infinite love and with all the confidence 
of infinite knowledge : "Laughter is coming 
back some day. There are smiles behind 
the tears. There are compensations to bal- 
ance all sorrows. Not all things are good, 
but all things work together for good, all 
things combine into a happy solution." 
This is the Beatitude, to know this. 

Over against it our Master uttered a 
warning : "Woe unto you that laugh now," 
He said sternly, "for you shall mourn and 
weep." This laughter that has woe in it is 
the only kind that the Bible records. It is 
the empty laugh of infidelity, the laugh of 
selfishness and scorn. The world is full 
of it to this very day. It floats back from 
the automobile rushing away from the man- 
gled form of a little child. It rings from 
the palaces built upon child labor and the 
oppression of the poor. It sounds from the 
high places of the earth, filled too often 
with men that make a mock of God. And 
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. 

But still, as year adds to year its ampli- 
fying wisdom and fructifying grace, the 
Christian laugh, with joy in it and not 
woe, is growing in the earth. With the 
strengthening of human bodies, the enfran- 
chising of human minds, the purifying of 
society, the deepening of brotherhood, with 
above all the better obeying of Christ, we 
are learning to laugh as He laughed. Thus 
year by year we are approaching the time 



MOURNERS AND LAUGHERS 43 



when the sad, necessary Beatitude of Pal- 
estine, "Blessed are the mourners," shall 
be absorbed and lost in the Beatitude of the 
New Jerusalem, "Blessed are they that 
laugh." 

"Happy are the mourners," said Christ, 
"because I am with them, adding my tears 
to theirs, and pointing forward to the sure 
time when the world's Beatitude of laugh- 
ter shall be realized in the lives of all my 
children." 



IV. 

Happy Are the Meek 
Happy Are the Hustlers 

NO Christian virtue so lacks apprecia- 
tion as meekness. About no other 
are we so hypocritical. With our mouths 
we say, "Blessed are the meek, for they 
shall inherit the earth." By our acts and 
our instinctive admirations we too often 
say, "Happy are the hustlers, who want 
the whole earth, and get it." 

By the meek Jesus meant the gentle, and 
so Dr. Moffat translates the word. He 
meant the retiring, kindly, yielding, modest 
folks, who do not resent harshnesses, who 
turn the other cheek to a second blow, who 
go the second mile, who give their coats to 
the thieves of their vests. These are the 
workers that can be imposed upon, that 
are willing to do more than their share. 
They are always on the hard committees, 
but never as chairmen, nor are their names 
printed in the programmes of the annual 
meeting. They sign subscription lists, "A 
Friend." They take the lowest seats at 
the table, and stay there. It is of them 
that the sneer is current, "They do not 
dare to say that their souls are their own." 
[44] 



MEEK AND HUSTLERS 45 



To speak of such as these as inheriting 
the earth seems to an honest modern no 
less than laughable. "The world for the 
hustlers !" we virtually if not virtuously 
cry. Our entire system of business com- 
petition is built upon it. Our' political 
methods are based upon it. Society, in its 
most vaunted aspects, is thus founded. The 
motto is even to be read occasionally over 
college entrances, and it is inscribed in 
Gothic letters above the portals of perhaps 
three metropolitan churches. 

The valued man of 1912 is the man who 
advertises successfully. He is the man 
who is "on his job" "with both feet" and 
all the time. He "delivers the goods," and 
chiefly to his own back door. He "gets 
there" ; and if any one else was there be- 
fore him, he establishes a vacancy just be- 
fore he arrives. 

Meekness, gentleness, considerateness, 
self-concealment, are not virtues to A. D. 
1912, whatever they may have been in 
A. D. 30. A chip on the shoulder is our 
modern epaulet. Most of us live at No. 1 
High Street. Most of us worship success 
without a preliminary analysis. All of us 
dislike selfishness, but we do not despise it, 
unless it fails. If it succeeds, we do not 
call it selfishness, we call it enterprise. 

Now I do not believe that so many Chris- 
tians would instinctively take this attitude 
toward the hustlers if there were not some- 



46 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



thing Christian in hustling. Indeed, I am 
prepared to find something essentially 
Christian in everything that real Chris- 
tians honestly admire. I am for discover- 
ing what it is, and for ceasing our hypoc- 
risy in pretending to admire the opposite. 

And in studying the character and life 
of Jesus Christ I find the point of contact 
between the meek and the hustlers, the per- 
fect reconciliation of the modern and the 
ancient Beatitudes. 

To be sure, Jesus was the meekest of 
men. When his cruel and bigoted fellow 
townsmen would throw Him over the cliff 
at Nazareth He did not smite them with 
lightning, He merely passed through the 
mob and quietly went His way. When, 
after the feeding of the five thousand, His 
exultant followers wanted to make Him a 
king, He hid Himself near Tyre. When 
Peter smote Malchus in His defence, He 
healed the wound and bade the headstrong 
disciple put up His sword. When slander 
and bigotry and hatred were doing their 
worst, before the Sanhedrim and Herod 
and Pilate, as a lamb before its shearers is 
dumb, so He opened not His mouth. Yes, 
even on the cross, even in the first wild 
rush of physical torture, He cried : "Fa- 
ther, forgive them! They know not what 
they do." 

But all this meekness was regarding 
Himself. Regarding His Father's business, 



MEEK AND HUSTLERS 



47 



regarding the kingdom of heaven, Jesus 
was no longer a Lamb, He was the Lion of 
Judah. Nor was it only in the repeated 
cleansing of the Temple with literal lash 
and the severer sting of righteous wrath. 
Nor was it merely in His fierce condemna- 
tion of the "scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites," 
the devourers of widows' houses, the bind- 
ers of heavy burdens. Nor was it only in 
the rebuke of demons and the imperious 
quieting of the tempest. 

Not the most hustling broker on Wall 
Street was a more strenuous worker than 
Jesus Christ. Not the most consummate 
advertiser of this advertising age can so 
effectively commend goods as Jesus could. 
In the meeting and mastering of competi- 
tion, in thoroughness of application, in 
tireless persistency, in unfaltering zeal, in 
sureness of touch, in accuracy of vision, 
and in sleepless energy, our Lord has no 
equal among the successful men even of 
America. 

He enjoyed His work ; it was His meat 
and drink. He never had a thought apart 
from it. His miracles advertised it as no 
enterprise before or since has been adver- 
tised. His marvellous words commended 
it to the millions as nothing else has ever 
been commended. He set on foot the world's 
vastest organization, and He did it with 
the smallest resources in money, men, and 
worldly power. For enterprise, for push, 



48 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



for industry, and for success, no promoter 
the world has ever known, no hustler of the 
hustlers, no strenuous of the strenuous, is 
to be compared with the divine Founder of 
our religion. 

And He is inheriting the earth. And 
His are inheriting the earth. The selfish 
hustlers may grab it, but the meek Naza- 
rene seizes it out of their grasp. Perfect 
meekness for one's self, combined with the 
most impetuous ardor for God and man, al- 
ways have triumphed, and always will. 

Happy indeed are the hustlers who are 
thus meek and unselfish ; happy indeed are 
the meek who are thus aggressive. By 
His flaming example our Lord thus added 
a corollary to His third Beatitude. Thus 
He commended His religion to the most 
energetic and manly. Thus He preserves 
their strength from greed and brutality. 
Thus to meekness He adds might and to 
might He adds meekness, the manly and 
the womanly elements of the perfect Chris- 
tian, 



Happy Are the Hungry 
Happy Are the Satisfied 

THE fourth Beatitude, like the first, is 
spiritualized in Matthew's report of 
the sermon. He says, "Blessed are they 
that hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
for they shall be filled." Luke leaves it on 
the material plane : "Blessed are ye that 
hunger now, for ye shall be filled." We 
may well believe that Jesus gave utter- 
ance to both sayings, the one being a com- 
ment upon the other, and that He began 
with declaring those happy that were suf- 
fering, as so many in His audiences always 
had suffered, with physical hunger. 

It is said that the larger part of the 
earth's population, namely, the majority of 
the hundred millions of India and China, 
never, from one year's end to another, know 
what it means to satisfy their hunger. We, 
in our land of plenty, have really no con- 
ception of this condition. Our physicians 
make it their chief warning that we shall 
not overeat, and devise for us elaborate 
systems of thorough mastication, that we 
may avoid that temptation. It is no temp- 
tation to the average Oriental. 

"Happy are the hungry" — those words 
[49] 



50 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



of Christ were indeed news to His hearers. 
To our gorged and gormandizing civiliza- 
tion they are somewhat obvious. "Never 
rise from the table quite satisfied," we are 
advised. "Never eat till you are hungry," 
the wise men tell us. And with many the 
chief object of exercise is to get up an ap- 
petite. Oar wealthy Western world is in 
the condition of the millionaire, who looks 
with envious eyes at his office-boy, munch- 
ing with a relish his pie and doughnuts out 
of a tin pail. 

Yes, and as to the higher aspects of life 
we Westerners are in the same predica- 
ment. Our life has become so complex, 
we are so rich in interests and excitements, 
that a terrible ennui has settled upon us 
like a pall. We hear so many delightful 
speakers that not even Webster or Glad- 
stone could move us to enthusiasm. We 
see so many books that the wittiest and 
wisest pages arouse in us no surprise and 
create only a languid pleasure. We have 
so many meetings that we have lost the 
glow of comradeship. We have heard so 
many sermons that we are gospel-hardened. 
Our spiritual emotions have been stimu- 
lated so often and so powerfully that they 
would respond only feebly should Calvary 
be enacted before us. "Verily, verily," 
we cry, "are those blessed that can hunger, 
really hunger, after righteousness" ; and 
all our churches are filled with longings 



HUNGRY AND SATISFIED 51 



for the first blessed ardor of conversion. 

But is this what Christ meant when He 
declared, "Happy are the hungry"? Not 
in either case. He was neither lauding 
starvation nor condemning satisfaction. 
"Ye shall be filled" was His joyful prom- 
ise. He pictured His kingdom, the king- 
dom of heaven on earth, as a great feast. 
He did not regard hunger as anything 
good, but as something good to get rid of, 
good to relieve and appease. And this of 
spiritual desire as well as the starvation 
of the body. 

Lowell was conscious that he was ex- 
pressing only a half-truth when he wrote : 

"Of all the myriad moods of mind 

That through the soul come thronging, 
Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, 
So beautiful as Longing?" 

There is a stimulus in longing, but, like 
the growing pains of a child, it is not a 
token of health. Growth, when healthy 
and normal, comes without pain. 

The theory of most commentators upon 
this Beatitude seems to be that there can 
be no appreciation without tantalization. 
Lovers must quarrel before they can know 
the full bliss of affection. "Absence makes 
the heart grow fonder." The sinner alone 
can value purity and peace. One does not 
really enjoy fair weather till one has weath- 
ered a storm. 

According to this false conception of 



52 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



life we sinning mortals have a satisfaction 
denied the angels themselves, in that we 
have fallen and so can understand the 
blessedness of restoration, which, indeed, 
you will see solemnly set forth in many a 
pious dissertation. Carried to its proper 
conclusion, our Lord Himself did not value 
heaven until He came to earth, nor realize 
the joy of communion with the Father un- 
til on Calvary He felt that the Father had 
forsaken Him. Carried to a conclusion 
still more absurd but entirely logical, ac- 
cording to this theory a satisfaction is pos- 
sible for men that is denied to the All-holy 
God Himself, who created men and their 
satisfactions. 

No ; let us never consider this fourth 
Beatitude as placing a premium upon star- 
vation, as glorifying asceticism, as fixing a 
halo upon the head of Want. The blessed- 
ness of Christ's hungry ones is not in their 
hunger, but in spite of it ; their happiness 
is not now, but is to come when they shall 
be filled. Let us not torture ourselves with 
the attempt to extract joy out of our pres- 
ent doubts and spiritual perplexities, the 
starvation of soul that yearns for comfort, 
for peace, for strength, for purity, amid 
the unrest and temptations and weaknesses 
of this storm-tossed life. We are to be 
satisfied, when we awake, in His likeness, 
and we are to be happy then, completely 
happy, if not before. 



HUNGRY AND SATISFIED 53 



Christ came to give life, and to give it 
abundantly. Here at last, as the poor old 
lady said at the seashore, is something that 
there is enough of. There is always enough, 
and twelve baskets over, when our Lord 
breaks the bread. 

Is all this to apologize for the overfilled 
gluttons of to-day, the gormandizers of our 
expensive hotels, the gormandizers of our 
gospel-plethorized churches, the greedy 
graspers to mouth and mind who have no 
regard for others but only for their own 
insatiate maws? Not at all, for such a 
life never satisfies. It is a gathering into 
a bag with holes. Just as he that eats 
more than he digests ends with being able 
to eat only gruel, so he that crams into his 
mind more spiritual nutriment than he 
utilizes in service becomes a spiritual dys- 
peptic, unable to retain any soul-food at 
all. It is of such gluttons that our Lord 
spoke in the Revelation : "Thou sayest, I 
am rich, and increased with goods, and 
have need of nothing ; and knowest not 
that thou art wretched, and miserable, and 
poor, and blind, and naked." 

But the fourth Beatitude asserts the 
happiness of real satisfaction, and prom- 
ises it to us, to take the place of all our 
present hungers. "They shall hunger no 
more, neither thirst any more," those that 
are with Christ in His Kingdom. And as 
we are waiting for His Kingdom and 



54 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



working for it, let us address ourselves, in 
His strength, to the satisfying of all inno- 
cent desires, all worthy aspirations, fully 
assured that as to earthly parents no pang 
is so sharp as the hunger of their children, 
it is even so with our Father in heaven. 
And so Christ's Beatitude, "Happy are the 
hungry," is another anticipatory Beatitude, 
involving as its sure culmination the 
world's instinctive Beatitude, "Happy are 
the satisfied," and showing the world the 
only way thereto, 



VI. 

Happy Are the Merciful 
Happy Are the Masterful 



THE fifth Beatitude has for its founda- 
tion the groundwork of humility. 
"Happy are the merciful, for they shall ob- 
tain mercy," implies that they need mercy. 
It is parallel to the petition in the Lord's 
Prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we for- 
give our debtors." Others are in debt to 
us, but we are even heavier debtors toward 
God. 

Indeed, no one but the humble is likely 
to be merciful. The proud and self-suffi- 
cient are pitiless. Needing nothing from 
others, they are not moved to give anything 
to others. Wrapped in a conceit of right- 
eousness, they condemn the unrighteous 
with all severity. Living in what they sup- 
pose to be impregnable fortresses, they can 
throw stones at all glass houses. They 
think they will never need to sing the 
prayer, 

"The mercy I to others show, 
That mercy show to me." 

It would seem that this Beatitude, of all 
the eight, would meet a cold reception 
among the people to whom Christ spoke 
[55] 



56 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



and at the time when He taught. It was 
nineteen centuries before the Red Cross, 
and war was pitilessly cruel. It was nine- 
teen centuries before John Howard, and 
prisons were places of torturing revenges 
oftener perhaps than of just punishments. 
The Romans were in the saddle, riding the 
world with a bridle that drew blood. The 
Jews, that were ridden over, were as im- 
perious and proud as any Roman. If to a 
Roman a Jew was a dog, to a Jew a Ro- 
man was a pig. An enemy was something 
to hate, to plot against, to lie in wait for, 
to leap upon, and to throttle savagely. A 
tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, was 
the creed even of religion. 

To this world of cherished animosities, 
and to this bitter and unforgetting race, 
our Saviour dared to preach the opposite 
doctrine. "Love your enemies," He com- 
manded while they scoffed ; "bless them 
that curse you, do good to them that hate 
you, and even pray for them that despite- 
fully use you and persecute you." And, 
while a few, His chosen few, heard and 
heeded, the great, strong world kept on its 
pitiless way. 

Is it otherwise in this that we call the 
year of our Lord, 1912? Still, while we 
repeat in our churches, "Happy are the 
merciful," do we not assert in our business, 
political, and social dealings, "Happy are 
the masterful" ? 



MERCIFUL AND MASTERFUL 57 



To be sure, our modern stilettos have 
plush handles, and are worn beneath our 
coats. As we have learned in physical war- 
fare to bury our batteries in banks of inno- 
cent green turf, as we use smokeless pow- 
der, and as we conduct our battles at long 
range of perhaps ten miles, so we wage our 
money wars and our social and political 
wars at long range, and we do not see or 
know the enemies at whom we so effectively 
fire. We send poisoned bullets through the 
post-office and dum-dums by telegraph and 
bombs by telephone. We spring mines in 
the court-room. We assassinate through 
the newspapers. We give death-blows by 
sight-drafts and foreclosures. It is all very 
polite, and gentlemanly, and murderous. 

A successful business man or politician 
or a successful society woman, if a church- 
member, is honored in our churches in pro- 
portion to his or her success, without em- 
barrassing scrutiny into the sources and 
methods of success. An unsuccessful man 
or woman is looked down upon in our 
churches, with no investigation of the rea- 
sons for failure. Sometimes, perhaps often, 
the failure is glorious and the success an 
infamy. Sometimes the failure means 
Christian mercifulness and the success 
means devilish masterfulness. Sometimes 
the man or woman who has been a worldly 
failure should be given the highest honors 
of the church, and the successful should be 



58 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



summarily ejected. Of course there are 
many exceptions, and I believe that every 
year the conscience of the church is grow- 
ing more sensitive as the church's intelli- 
gence is deepened ; but still, in the main, 
even among Christians, the debt-collector 
is esteemed above the debt-forgiver, the 
shrewd bargainer above the man who holds 
the losing end, the forceful above the gen- 
tle, the masterful above the merciful. 

No one was ever so masterful as Jesus 
Christ. He said once, "Ye call me Master 
and Lord ; and ye say well, for so I am." 
But do you remember when He said that? 
It was after He had washed the disciples' 
feet. "If I, then, your Lord and Master," 
said He, "have washed your feet, ye also 
ought to wash one another's feet." Then 
He added a ninth Beatitude : "If ye know 
these things, happy are ye if ye do them." 

The few literalists that insist upon the 
fulfilment of Christ's command with actual 
soap and water may well be emulated by 
all Christians, transferring the precept to 
the spiritual domain where He Himself 
would place it. All around us there are 
souls that are weary of the difficult roads, 
hot and worn, needing the refreshing bath 
of sympathy. All around us are soul 
stains, hiding or flaunting, needing, so 
sadly needing from men the erasing bath 
of forgiveness with which the Son of Man 
will supply them at a word of asking. Still 



MERCIFUL AND MASTERFUL 59 



we are in the Upper Room, and still too 
often the offices of mercy must wait upon 
our pride, while the Master girds Himself 
with a towel and takes the basin and ewer. 
Some day we shall see that in this He is 
most masterful as well as most merciful, 
and we shall be eager and proud to kneel 
beside Him on the floor. Some day we 
shall understand that the world's Beati- 
tude, "Blessed are the masterful," is to be 
compassed only by way of Christ's Beati- 
tude, "Blessed are the merciful." 



VII. 

Happy Are the Pure 
Happy Are the Experienced 

NO other Beatitude has so touched the 
imaginations and moved the desires of 
Christians as the sixth, "Happy are the 
pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
Surely He who spoke those words, who 
made that lovely promise, was pure in 
heart, tempted in all points as we are 
tempted and yet without sin. And surely 
He saw God. No man had seen God at 
any time, but the only begotten Son, com- 
ing from the very bosom of the Father, 
declared Him to men, told us what He 
looks like, told us what He says, showed 
us the manner of His life. And then He 
assured us that if we keep our hearts pure, 
we shall have the same imperial privilege. 

But what did Christ mean by a pure 
heart? Through all the Christian ages, 
and even in the present day, the vast ma- 
jority of those that have called themselves 
Christians, especially the Greek and Ro- 
man Catholics, have held that purity means 
withdrawal from the world, and have pic- 
tured the monk and the nun as those most 
likely to see God. They have associated 
purity with paucity of human intercourse. 
[60] 



PURE AND EXPERIENCED 61 



The hermits have been the saints. Their 
priests and their holy men and women 
must not marry. They must not mingle 
with the world's buyers and sellers. The 
church must be a thing apart from the 
world. The Christ-presence must be shut 
up in a golden box, inside a golden cross, 
inside a marble shrine, inside a massive, 
dark, silent stone temple. Purity has 
meant isolation, solitude, meagreness of in- 
terests, absorption in the central thought 
of God. All this has been and is much 
like the monkish systems of the Buddhists, 
and the monumental aloofnesses of the 
Hindus. It has its parallel in every nat- 
ural religion; but is it Christian? Is it 
what Christ meant by purity of heart? 

At any rate, it all runs counter to our 
natural idea of happiness, which associates 
joy with experience. With what instinc- 
tive admiration we look up to a "man of 
the world," as we call him grandly ; a cos- 
mopolitan man ; a man who has travelled 
widely, has seen strange and remote re- 
gions, has witnessed weird customs, has 
tasted queer foods, has talked with all races 
of men ! Our government, in its placards 
calling for recruits for the army and navy, 
appeals to this universal admiration. It 
shows in gayly colored pictures our sol- 
diers and sailors amid tropic scenes, daz- 
zling the natives with bright uniforms, 
pitching their tents among palms, or sail- 



62 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



ing toward the aurora borealis. The small 
boy gazes with open mouth at the gypsy or 
the circus-rider, longs to go with him out 
along the far-stretching roads and into 
novel experiences, and is eager for the time 
when he too may explore the world and 
become a maker of romance. 

Similarly the love of adventure is the 
temptation craftily used by the devil in the 
beginning of many sins. The boy sees men 
smoking as if they enjoyed it, and he wants 
to smoke and see how it feels. He sees 
men excited with strong drink, and he 
wants to have the sensation of a reeling 
and dancing and hilarious world. He reads 
of dare-devil bandits and prodigiously skil- 
ful thieves, and he wants to wear a black 
mask, and carry a dark lantern and a re- 
volver, and prowl about the streets at mid- 
night. 

The hold of the theatre upon men and 
women is largely this, that it introduces 
them to endless novelties, it familiarizes 
them with a wide range of characters and 
experiences, it lifts them bodily out of the 
humdrum routine of their uninteresting 
lives. The romance of the gaming-table for 
men and of the ballroom for women is the 
secret of their fascination. And for all, 
for children and adults, one of the surest 
defences against sin is occupation, varied 
and delightful interests, honorable adven- 
tures into the domain of the unknown. 



PURE AND EXPERIENCED 63 



Need I remind you how thoroughly our 
Lord is in evident sympathy with this love 
of adventure? He, in the supreme and 
final sense, was a man of the world. We 
never think of Him as a Jew or even as an 
Asiatic ; He was a cosmopolitan. He be- 
came an adventurer. He went forth as a 
true knight. He had no abiding-place, 
nowhere to lay His head. Back and forth 
He wove His wanderings, until perhaps 
every path in Palestine was familiar with 
His feet. 

And He entered into all experiences. He 
chose for His disciples a band as motley as 
Robin Hood's. There was the lofty-minded 
John and the base-thinking Judas, and the 
inquring Thomas, and the systematic Mat- 
thew, and the enterprising Philip, and the 
practical Andrew, and the headstrong 
Peter. Among His friends were rich and 
poor, Nicodemus and Bartimseus, Lazarus 
the rich and Lazarus the beggar. He vis- 
ited in the homes of Pharisees, and the 
houses of tax-gatherers. He associated 
with Mary the holy, and with harlots. He 
died with thieves and was buried by the 
Counsellor Joseph. He knew how to meet 
all men, how to bear Himself in all cir- 
cumstances, how to participate in all con- 
ditions. Is He the man whose ideal of pu- 
rity would be a pallid monk? 

And He sent His disciples forth into all 
the world. He set His own life as an ex- 



64 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



ample for theirs. They were to be all 
things to all men, as He had been. They, 
even more than the Roman historian, were 
to count nothing human as foreign to them- 
selves. 

And, we may reverently ask, is it not 
thus with God Himself? He enters all 
hearts, the depraved as well as the holy. 
He reads the open book of every mind, the 
filthy as well as the noble. He sees every 
act, in the darkness as well as at noonday, 
acts of cruelty and foulness as well as acts 
of self-sacrifice and heroism. In His case, 
as in the case of the Messiah, perfect pu- 
rity co-exists with full-orbed experience. 

May it not be thus with the men that 
He created? The pure in heart that see 
God, must they not be pure in the same 
way in which He is pure? It is prophesied 
that when we see Him we are to be like 
Him. Can we be like Him in more char- 
acteristic fashion than this, that we are 
able to enter helpfully, sympathetically, 
into all lives, into all the experiences of 
normal men, and yet remain pure? 

Thus it is that the happiness of the 
world, resting so largely upon adventurous 
experience, is taken up into the happiness 
of the Christian. Thus it is that purity 
seizes upon romance, and the church yields 
no whit in interest to the world. Thus it 
is that our varied and fascinating human 
affairs not only need not brush the bloom 



PURE AND EXPERIENCED 65 



from our unsullied purity, but they may 
even lift us into the large outreaches of the 
Infinite One, and show us Him whom really 
to see is fulness of life. 



VIII. 



Happy Are the Peacemakers 
Happy Are the Fighters 

"OEACE I leave with you,"— these 
1 were almost the parting words of 
Christ to His disciples, — "my peace I give 
unto you" ; but He immediately and sig- 
nificantly added, "Not as the world giveth, 
give I unto you." 

In the Beatitude of peace, fittingly the 
seventh Beatitude, that of the perfect 
number, did Christ signify the peace of the 
world, or did He have in mind His peace, 
which is not such as the world gives? 
What kind of peace is the aim of the peace- 
maker whom Christ counts happy, the 
peacemaker who is to be called a child of 
God? What kind of peace, on the other 
hand, had Christ in mind when He said, 
"Think not that I am come to send peace 
on earth : I came not to send peace, but a 
sword"? 

It is the tradition that at our Saviour's 
birth the world was at peace, and the gate 
of Janus was closed. 

"No war or battle's sound 
Was heard the world around ; 
The idle spear and shield were high uphung." 

[66] 



PEACEMAKERS AND FIGHTERS 67 



However that may be, the gate was soon 
opened again for the passage of troops, 
and fighting has progressed, with increas- 
ing horrors and at increasing cost of money 
and misery, from that day to this ; and 
well in the van of military prowess, and in 
the number and ferocity of their wars, have 
ever been the Christian nations. In this 
are they Christian? Is this the kind of 
sword that Christ brought to earth, or do 
the angels' song at Bethlehem and the sev- 
enth Beatitude represent the Christian 
spirit? 

There is no question which the world 
would choose, if choice is to be made be- 
tween them. "Happy are the fighters," 
the world persists in saying, and never, 
"Happy are the peacemakers." In the 
world's farce it is always the peacemaker 
that thrusts his luckless person between 
the quarrelling clowns, and receives the 
blows that each intended for the other. 
After all the generations since Christ lived, 
after all these millions of sermons and 
prayers and hymns and gatherings around 
the communion-table, it is only in our gen- 
eration that the nations, the Christian na- 
tions, have begun to organize for peace. 
And while Peace waits hopefully at the 
Hague our armies are swollen to a vaster 
size than ever before, our navies have be- 
come monumental prodigies of force and 
folly, and every year we waste upon the 



68 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



possibility of war two-thirds of our na- 
tional resources. 

Yes, and still further to discount the 
Hague, in our relations with one another, 
class with class, rich with poor, laborer 
with employer, hand worker with head 
worker, we are fanning the flames of a war 
compared with which all the wars of Napo- 
leon were a child's parade. 

No wonder, since these warring powers 
are raging in the world, that men look for 
fighters, and place them at the head of gov- 
ernments and corporations and parties and 
schools and human enterprises of all kinds. 
No wonder that we bow down before the 
fighter, and serve him. He seems our only 
salvation from chaos, our only hope of suc- 
cess. What avails the thinker, if he will 
not fight for his thought? What avails the 
loveliest, most winsome character, if it is 
immured in a dungeon? 

And so all the world, even the hearts on 
which the Beatitudes are written, dearly 
loves a man of pugnacity. A slugging- 
match in a street will draw a bigger crowd 
than any gospel singer. A church quarrel 
is better advertised than all the sermons 
ever preached in that church put together. 
The most exalted principles, such as human 
freedom, do not receive much attention till 
Garrison gets mobbed for them, and Uncle 
Tom is beaten, and John Brown is hanged. 
What impresses itself upon life is life, and 



PEACEMAKERS AND FIGHTERS 69 



any cause gets attention as soon as it is 
made evident that men are putting into it 
not merely their thoughts and their words 
and their coins but their blood. 

Therefore the best commentary on the 
seventh Beatitude is Christ's saying, "And 
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto me." By that sign, the 
sign of the cross, He conquered. By that 
spear which entered his own side, He be- 
came the world's peacemaker. "He is our 
peace," declared Paul, "having slain en- 
mity by the cross." 

By way of the cross all the world's peace- 
makers enter into their happiness. Verily 
it is not such peace as the world gives or 
imagines. It means fathers against sons 
and mothers against daughters and house- 
holds divided into foes. It means laborers 
and employers struggling for a just social 
order. It means war against war. It 
means battle for the Bible. It means fight- 
ing for a free school and a free press. It 
means clear vision, stout arm, and an un- 
faltering heart. It means, even yet it 
means, many a martyrdom. 

But — and here is the point of union be- 
tween the two Beatitudes, "Blessed are the 
peacemakers" and "Blessed are the fight- 
ers" — it means ever the widening of the 
realm of peace, and that the ground won 
shall be held immutably. Christ never 
urged peace at any price. He would not 



70 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



cry Peace, Peace, where there is no peace. 
It is peacemakers that are happy, and not 
peace-fakers. Nothing is settled till it is 
settled right. Christians are peacemakers 
because, at whatever cost of pain and strug- 
gle and bloodshed, they are engaged in set- 
ting things right, in organizing peace upon 
the only sure foundation, that of absolute 
justice and brother-love. 

And they shall be called the children of 
God, these peacemakers, these fighters, be- 
cause it is precisely such work that God is 
always doing. Christ was God's witness, 
how greatly He desired to be at peace with 
His children. Calvary was God's witness 
that it must be pe # ace through Tightness. 



IX. 

Happy Are the Persecuted 
Happy Are the Popular 

THE climax of Christ's paradoxical Be- 
atitudes is the last, "Happy are the 
persecuted." The condition that He added, 
"persecuted for righteousness' sake," or, as 
Luke gives it, "for the Son of man's sake," 
does not lessen the strangeness of the say- 
ing, since those to whom He was speaking 
would not be likely to suffer persecution 
from any other cause. 

This Beatitude does not seem strange to 
us, because we are strangers to persecu- 
tion. Persecution is a name to us, a hear- 
say, a matter of reading. The saying was 
quite different to those to whom persecu- 
tion was a matter of shrinking flesh, of 
agonized nerves, and of racked souls. To 
the Christian of the first three centuries 
this Beatitude meant the torture of his 
loved ones with all ingenuities of devilish 
cruelty. It meant the abyss of gnawing 
poverty. It meant the climax of hate. It 
meant absolute loneliness. It meant the 
hunted life of a wild beast. It meant burn- 
ing disgrace in the eyes of the world's most 
honorable men. Whatever sad and terrible 
could be packed into a single word was 
[71] 



72 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



crammed into the word, "persecution." 
And the persecuted must be regarded 
happy ! The persecuted were bidden to re- 
joice ! They were commanded to be ex- 
ceeding glad ! No mere resignation and 
grim endurance was to be theirs, no hero- 
ism of suffering. There were to be no he- 
roics about it. Persecution was to be wel- 
comed as the best of good fortunes. Its 
coming was to be hailed with jubilation. 

And it must be admitted that the early 
Christians entered gloriously into the spirit 
of this spirited Beatitude. Caves became 
palaces to them, and the wilderness blos- 
somed with the rose of Sharon. They sang 
in midnight prisons. They wreathed the 
lions with garlands of praise. They opened 
their arms to the sword. They entered the 
flames as a chariot of fire. Starvation was 
their meat and drink, and every martyrdom 
a mercy. No wonder that the blood of such 
martyrs was the seed of a multiplying 
church. 

No thoughtful Christian of to-day can 
read the story of the first three centuries 
without asking earnestly : "Has the world 
outgrown this Beatitude by its uprightness, 
or have Christians become too ignoble for 
it? Have we lost the privilege of persecu- 
tion by indifference and cowardice, and 
with it have we lost the promised happiness 
of the kingdom of heaven?" 

There is no doubt that for "Happy are 



PERSECUTED AND POPULAR 73 



the persecuted" we have substituted 
"Happy are the popular." We estimate 
our statesmen largely by the number of 
votes they can get. We value organiza- 
tions in proportion to the size of their mem- 
bership. Advocates of honorable causes are 
obliged to show continually enlarging sta- 
tistics. When a man has enemies, when 
charges are preferred against him, no mat- 
ter what charges or by whom preferred, at 
once we think less of the man. "No smoke 
without some fire," is our charitable prov- 
erb. 

We are consistent in applying the same 
test to our churches and other religious or- 
ganizations. We require our pastors to 
keep up the number of accessions, and we 
count the heads in the pews on Sunday. If 
the Sunday schools or the Christian En- 
deavor societies show a falling-off in num- 
bers, we are eager to supplant them with 
contrivances more popular. If the mission- 
fields do not report a large number of con- 
verts, we question the wisdom of missions. 
That false maxim of the business world, 
"Nothing succeeds like success," has been 
taken over into the religious world, so that 
when, from lack of deserved support, a 
good cause fails to prosper, it does not 
dare to disclose its true condition, but must 
wear false diamonds, and ride in a rented 
automobile, and run up a bill at the gro- 
cer's, in the hope that the show of ac- 



74 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



complishment may bring the reality in time. 

We must not lose the measure of truth 
that is in the world's Beatitude, "Happy 
are the popular." "Woe unto you," said 
Christ, "when all men shall speak well of 
you !" and yet He prophesied that His cru- 
cifixion would draw "all men" to Himself. 

It is remarkable how many times our 
Lord spoke of His glory. It was always in 
the future, however. He was to come in 
clouds with glory. It was to be the glory 
given Him by His Father. He rejoiced 
that His disciples should behold His glory. 
Those disciples themselves recognized it 
even on the earth. "We beheld His glory," 
John writes. In the first of miracles, that 
at Cana, we are told that our Lord mani- 
fested His glory. While Jesus bade His 
followers not to love the glory that is of 
men more than the glory that is of God, He 
never rebuked them for loving glory. 

Indeed, the desire for approval, for pop- 
ularity, is one of the most deeply seated, 
powerful, and beneficent qualities planted 
in us by the All-wise Creator. When the 
development of our civilization has removed 
from us the selfish incentive of getting 
more than our neighbors, the mainspring of 
progress will be the desire for our neigh- 
bors' praise, the approval of man and of 
God. 

This is not an ignoble desire. It has its 
origin in the purest Christian motive, love 



PERSECUTED AND POPULAR 75 



and the longing for love. When Christ 
said, "Happy are ye when men shall hate 
you," He seemed to run counter to His own 
plea for universal love. 

He seemed to, but it was only in seem- 
ing. The two Beatitudes, "Happy are the 
persecuted" and "Happy are the popular," 
are one at heart, after all. It is for love 
that Christians submit to persecution, love 
of their enemies, whom it would be so much 
easier and pleasanter to transform into 
friends by cowardly compliance ; and love of 
God, who died upon the cross rather than 
curse the world by yielding to it. 

I used to know in college a young man 
whose proud boast it was that he had been 
driven out of more than one town for his 
religious opinions. I have forgotten his 
heresy, but I remember his martyrdom. He 
was sorely disappointed, I think, that he 
was not ridden on a rail out of our college 
community. 

But martyrdom is not to be sought. The 
persecution that makes happy is persecu- 
tion that is dreaded, not through fear for 
ourselves, but through fear for others, be- 
cause we do not want them to espouse the 
evil and condemn the good. Such persecu- 
tion leads the world right into the kingdom 
of hell, though it carries its victims to the 
kingdom of heaven. 

And we pray, Thy kingdom come, on 
earth as in heaven. Therefore we pray for 



76 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



the popularity of the kingdom of heaven, 
and of all its glad subjects. Therefore we 
labor, amid persecutions it may well be, for 
the end of all persecutions, and for the time 
when all the world shall become the king- 
dom of our Lord. 



X. 

What Is Christian Happiness? 

NOW that we have finished our survey 
of Christ's formula for happiness, 
what conclusions may we reach? 

First, that our Lord sympathizes with 
His followers' wish to be happy. He is 
more eager, as we so often say and so sel- 
dom believe, to give good things than we to 
receive them. And it is not a pious pre- 
tence of happiness, but the real article, 
plain, homely, every-day happiness. It does 
not require a cathedral for its enjoyment. 
It fits us before we get wings. It attaches 
itself to us just as we are. It develops us, 
but we enjoy every step of the process. It 
is pure gold and not a gold brick. 

Second, we may conclude that it is never 
safe to build our religion upon a single 
point, upon one idea, one aspect of many- 
sided truth. A religious structure thus es- 
tablished will soon topple into the ditch of 
fantastical vagaries, the mire of crankism. 
All religious extremists, from monks and 
nuns and hermits and whirling dervishes 
and holy men stretched upon beds of nails 
down to Millerites and Dowieites and all 
other ites that ever founded an -itis — every 
one of these unbalanced fads arose from 
[77] 



HAPPINESS HAVEN 



over-emphasis of isolated texts, from a fail- 
ure to compare spiritual things with spir- 
itual. There is not one of the Beatitudes 
but is modified in its interpretation, broad- 
ened, deepened, and rendered less paradox- 
ical by association with other sayings of 
our Master and other aspects of His char- 
acter and revelation. If God could not put 
all of Himself even into Jesus Christ, but 
was greater than the Son, surely He could 
not put all of Himself, or even all of His 
truth on any subject, into one utterance of 
Christ's. 

In the third place, we have noticed that 
each of Christ's Beatitudes finds a point of 
contact with the corresponding, apparently 
opposed, Beatitude of the world. The poor 
are happy, in spite of their poverty, when 
they are poor in spirit ; but the rich also 
are happy when they are poor in spirit, and 
are seeking to make others rich. Mourners 
will be happy, and will find a joy denied to 
empty-headed laughers; but laughter also 
is happiness, when light hearts are laid be- 
neath heavy ones, to lift them. The meek 
are happy, and the merciful, and the peace- 
makers ; but these are not happy unless at 
the same time they are aggressive and mas- 
terful fighters for the kingdom of heaven. 
The hungry are happy, but in view of the 
time when they shall be satisfied ; the pure, 
but they may also be experienced ; the per- 
secuted, but they are to be the popular. 



WHAT IS HAPPINESS? 79 



Fourth, we must remember that every 
Beatitude has for its aim, not a continu- 
ance of the sad condition in which it starts, 
but a purification and glorification of the 
corresponding worldly Beatitude. We are 
not to remain poor, mourners, hungry, per- 
secuted, but are to become rich, laughing, 
satisfied, popular. Our meekness is to be 
crowned with the bays of proud achieve- 
ment. Our mercifulness is to become a con- 
comitant of masterfulness. Our purity is 
to exist in the largest experiences. Our 
peace is to be the issue of heroic strife. 
What we need, then, in order to become 
truly Christlike, is not to root out our nat- 
ural emotions and longings, but to allow 
Christ to transform them, by the renewing 
of our minds, into His likeness. He is to 
take the image of the earthy and change it 
into the image of the heavenly. 

After all, Christ did not need eight Beati- 
tudes to set forth His formula for happi- 
ness, but He put it all into a single Beati- 
tude. He said, "If ye know these things," 
— and certainly we do know them, — "happy 
are ye if ye do them." The Beatitude is 
repeated in the last chapter of the Bible, 
"Happy are they that do His command- 
ments, that they may have right to the tree 
of life, and may enter in through the gates 
into the city." 

His commandment is that, however poor 
or rich, we shall enrich others, and be rich 



80 HAPPINESS HAVEN 



ourselves in Him. 

His commandment is that, however sad 
or happy our worldly lot, we shall try to 
set the world to laughing, and shall rejoice 
in hope. 

His commandment is that we shall be 
meek for ourselves, but aggressive for Him 
and His. 

His commandment is that, however hun- 
gry ourselves, we shall try to satisfy the 
hunger of the world, and be sure that in 
the generous activity we shall ourselves find 
complete satisfaction. 

His commandment is that we are to be 
merciful to the fallen, and masterful to lift 
them up. 

His commandment is that we are to 
know the sins and miseries of the world, 
preserving our purity through the purify- 
ing of others. 

His commandment is that we are so to 
war against evil that there need be no more 
war. 

His commandment is that we are to en- 
dure all persecution while seeking to make 
Christianity popular. 

Happy are they that do His command- 
ments, for they have already eaten of the 
tree of eternal life, and they are already 
dwelling in the city of God's love. 



DEC 20 1912 






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